«Protocol»
«We cannot betray people»
How Protocol from Kuban continues to release investigations after blocking and the case of «discrediting»
Protocol from Kuban emerged in 2018 as a spin-off of a Telegram channel run by Alexander Savelyev, an activist and the current editor-in-chief; the channel broadcast live from the region’s political courts. Since 2020, Protocol has had several journalists on its team, the media outlet has a website with news and long-form articles.
It monitors the persecution of activists, conducts anti-corruption investigations and reports on police provocations in the Krasnodar region. Topics that the state media remain silent about have earned Protocol a loyal readership, the publication lives off donations.
After February 24, Protocol has mostly published on war-related matters. The editors recorded an anti-war video, after which the team was held administratively liable for discrediting the army. On March 5, Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media regulator, blocked the project’s website, and a week later the law enforcement searched the home of Matvei Kurdyukov, deputy editor-in-chief, in connection with the "telephone terrorism" case.
Now Protocol is returning to its pre-war agenda: publishing investigations. Aleksandr Savelyev says that their readers value this kind of publications most of all. And the journalists themselves cannot imagine their work without such stories.
It monitors the persecution of activists, conducts anti-corruption investigations and reports on police provocations in the Krasnodar region. Topics that the state media remain silent about have earned Protocol a loyal readership, the publication lives off donations.
After February 24, Protocol has mostly published on war-related matters. The editors recorded an anti-war video, after which the team was held administratively liable for discrediting the army. On March 5, Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media regulator, blocked the project’s website, and a week later the law enforcement searched the home of Matvei Kurdyukov, deputy editor-in-chief, in connection with the "telephone terrorism" case.
Now Protocol is returning to its pre-war agenda: publishing investigations. Aleksandr Savelyev says that their readers value this kind of publications most of all. And the journalists themselves cannot imagine their work without such stories.
«We cannot betray people»
How Protocol from Kuban continues to release investigations after blocking and the case of «discrediting»
«PROTOCOL»
Protocol from Kuban emerged in 2018 as a spin-off of a Telegram channel run by Alexander Savelyev, an activist and the current editor-in-chief; the channel broadcast live from the region’s political courts. Since 2020, Protocol has had several journalists on its team, the media outlet has a website with news and long-form articles.
It monitors the persecution of activists, conducts anti-corruption investigations and reports on police provocations in the Krasnodar region. Topics that the state media remain silent about have earned Protocol a loyal readership, the publication lives off donations.
After February 24, Protocol has mostly published on war-related matters. The editors recorded an anti-war video, after which the team was held administratively liable for discrediting the army. On March 5, Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media regulator, blocked the project’s website, and a week later the law enforcement searched the home of Matvei Kurdyukov, deputy editor-in-chief, in connection with the «telephone terrorism» case.
Now Protocol is returning to its pre-war agenda: publishing investigations. Aleksandr Savelyev says that their readers value this kind of publications most of all. And the journalists themselves cannot imagine their work without such stories.
It monitors the persecution of activists, conducts anti-corruption investigations and reports on police provocations in the Krasnodar region. Topics that the state media remain silent about have earned Protocol a loyal readership, the publication lives off donations.
After February 24, Protocol has mostly published on war-related matters. The editors recorded an anti-war video, after which the team was held administratively liable for discrediting the army. On March 5, Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media regulator, blocked the project’s website, and a week later the law enforcement searched the home of Matvei Kurdyukov, deputy editor-in-chief, in connection with the «telephone terrorism» case.
Now Protocol is returning to its pre-war agenda: publishing investigations. Aleksandr Savelyev says that their readers value this kind of publications most of all. And the journalists themselves cannot imagine their work without such stories.
Alexander Saveliev
Before the war
— I started the Telegram channel during the "He is not our Tsar" protests on May 5, 2018. And in September, the case of Mikhail Benyash, the lawyer who was beaten by the police and tried for allegedly beating them, happened.
Many activists did not understand how to support Mikhail, while I, with my experience of the campaign in defense of Evgeny Vitishko as part of the Environmental Watch on North Caucasus project (an environmental and human rights NGO working in six regions of the North Caucasus — note by the project team) in 2014−2015, understood what we had to do. We needed to make Benyash’s trials as public and open as possible. As the public was not allowed into the court room, I started broadcasting the hearings live.
For Vitishko’s trial we did it on Twitter, but Telegram seemed to me to be a more convenient platform. This is how I set up my channel for live broadcasts. Sometimes they were picked up by Mediazona, OVD-info and other media outlets. During one of the hearings, Benyash’s lawyer joked that I was taking minutes. The court secretary said: "You take minutes faster than I do". Naturally, they read my channel. That’s how the name "Protocol" [Russian for "minutes"] came about. After some time, people who wanted to work with me joined the effort.
Gradually we came up with a new format: news plus long-form articles and investigations, and set up a website. That was January 2020. The main topics were the ones the state media did not write about: human rights protection, persecution of activists, provocation by the police, and corruption.
Our first major investigation was on "Krasnodar Robber Barons", about how a huge area in Kuban was privatized for 11.5 rubles per square meter. Then there was an investigation about a large sum of money being stolen from the budget because of the installation of advertising structures in Krasnodar without holding a tender. Another investigation was about a witness in the case of Yana Antonova, who was criminally prosecuted for participating in an undesirable organization. We deal with topics that will not be shown on Kuban 24 or in Vesti. Kuban TV programme.
Until 24 February, there wasn’t much pressure on us. We could work as we wished. The only thing was that last summer there was a clear and uneasy feeling that I personally was running high risks. I noticed outside surveillance, this was related to the criminal case linked either to Open Russia or to MBH Media, or to the fact that MBH Media, according to them, is a project of Open Russia (in 2018 and 2019, Alexander was prosecuted for his participation in the undesirable Open Russia organization — note by the project team).
Then I decided I had to do something about it: I left Russia planning to come back after a few months. But I still haven’t come back as I learnt that the court decided to reopen the criminal case. At the same time, we don’t know what’s the reason for that, we haven’t received any notifications.
Many activists did not understand how to support Mikhail, while I, with my experience of the campaign in defense of Evgeny Vitishko as part of the Environmental Watch on North Caucasus project (an environmental and human rights NGO working in six regions of the North Caucasus — note by the project team) in 2014−2015, understood what we had to do. We needed to make Benyash’s trials as public and open as possible. As the public was not allowed into the court room, I started broadcasting the hearings live.
For Vitishko’s trial we did it on Twitter, but Telegram seemed to me to be a more convenient platform. This is how I set up my channel for live broadcasts. Sometimes they were picked up by Mediazona, OVD-info and other media outlets. During one of the hearings, Benyash’s lawyer joked that I was taking minutes. The court secretary said: "You take minutes faster than I do". Naturally, they read my channel. That’s how the name "Protocol" [Russian for "minutes"] came about. After some time, people who wanted to work with me joined the effort.
Gradually we came up with a new format: news plus long-form articles and investigations, and set up a website. That was January 2020. The main topics were the ones the state media did not write about: human rights protection, persecution of activists, provocation by the police, and corruption.
Our first major investigation was on "Krasnodar Robber Barons", about how a huge area in Kuban was privatized for 11.5 rubles per square meter. Then there was an investigation about a large sum of money being stolen from the budget because of the installation of advertising structures in Krasnodar without holding a tender. Another investigation was about a witness in the case of Yana Antonova, who was criminally prosecuted for participating in an undesirable organization. We deal with topics that will not be shown on Kuban 24 or in Vesti. Kuban TV programme.
Until 24 February, there wasn’t much pressure on us. We could work as we wished. The only thing was that last summer there was a clear and uneasy feeling that I personally was running high risks. I noticed outside surveillance, this was related to the criminal case linked either to Open Russia or to MBH Media, or to the fact that MBH Media, according to them, is a project of Open Russia (in 2018 and 2019, Alexander was prosecuted for his participation in the undesirable Open Russia organization — note by the project team).
Then I decided I had to do something about it: I left Russia planning to come back after a few months. But I still haven’t come back as I learnt that the court decided to reopen the criminal case. At the same time, we don’t know what’s the reason for that, we haven’t received any notifications.
Turning point
— on February 24, when the war broke out, our editorial team was shocked. It all took me by surprise as well, but I realized that we had to work harder than ever and do what we were doing.
Everyone — four or five editorial staff members and the ten people who help us — were in a stupor for a few days, unsure of how to proceed. But I guess we didn’t have a moment of despair. Not that I am used to crisis situations, but I know how to deal with them and try to find ways out of them. In December 2017, my friend Andrei Rudomakha, coordinator of Environmental Watch on North Caucasus, was beaten up. For a month, while he was in hospital with serious injuries, I campaigned for Andrei. There were many situations in which I learned not to give up and look for opportunities to continue doing something.
When the war started, we tried to continue our work at Protocol at least within the news agenda. Continuing projects that had already been started was challenging psychologically. I decided that now we would only cover rallies, single pickets, and actions because it was unclear who would cover those all if we stopped doing it. After a month or so, we began to realize that our readers valued our investigations and we returned to this format.
Everyone — four or five editorial staff members and the ten people who help us — were in a stupor for a few days, unsure of how to proceed. But I guess we didn’t have a moment of despair. Not that I am used to crisis situations, but I know how to deal with them and try to find ways out of them. In December 2017, my friend Andrei Rudomakha, coordinator of Environmental Watch on North Caucasus, was beaten up. For a month, while he was in hospital with serious injuries, I campaigned for Andrei. There were many situations in which I learned not to give up and look for opportunities to continue doing something.
When the war started, we tried to continue our work at Protocol at least within the news agenda. Continuing projects that had already been started was challenging psychologically. I decided that now we would only cover rallies, single pickets, and actions because it was unclear who would cover those all if we stopped doing it. After a month or so, we began to realize that our readers valued our investigations and we returned to this format.
Pressure
— After the war started, pressure started to build up on us. The last video on our YouTube channel was the one where we spoke out against the war: volunteers and project participants decided that we needed to say something about it. And all those who were in the video have been charged with discrediting the army. They were Yulia Leshova, Mikhail Benyash, Alexei Mandrigeli, Matvei Kurdyukov and myself. At one point, the house of one of the Environmental Watch on North Caucasus activists, my deputy Matvei Kurdyukov, was searched. He allegedly called the Civic Chamber and reported a bombing, although there was no evidence of this.
On March 5, our website was blocked and this is another example of the pressure on Protocol. First, we were blocked by the hosting company, it simply deleted the website. When we migrated to a different web host, it turned out that we had been blocked by Roskomnadzor. At the same time, it is difficult to find our website in the register, we only found it in Roskomsvoboda’s [an NGO that supports protection of digital rights] monitoring list of blocked websites. Generally, we anticipated the blocking, but I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.
After the website was blocked, we did not change our work much. We created a mirror of the website and came up with mechanisms for working under the new conditions. I believe that the blocking will not affect the survival of the media.
On March 5, our website was blocked and this is another example of the pressure on Protocol. First, we were blocked by the hosting company, it simply deleted the website. When we migrated to a different web host, it turned out that we had been blocked by Roskomnadzor. At the same time, it is difficult to find our website in the register, we only found it in Roskomsvoboda’s [an NGO that supports protection of digital rights] monitoring list of blocked websites. Generally, we anticipated the blocking, but I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.
After the website was blocked, we did not change our work much. We created a mirror of the website and came up with mechanisms for working under the new conditions. I believe that the blocking will not affect the survival of the media.
Future
— Now we are back to investigations and are working on a big case: we are investigating the construction of one of the worst housing estates, in all of Russia probably. It is a neighborhood in Krasnodar called "Muzykalny", which was built in circumvention of all sanitary and town-planning norms. We know who did it and why it became possible, the story will hopefully come out soon.
I think we need to keep doing such investigations because people will get tired of terrible war news, they will want to read about what they are used to. It is difficult to read for a long time about the atrocities and nonsensical ideas spewed out by our officials. Of course, we will cover the war as well. But we will also continue with investigations, no matter what.
Over the course of our work, we have built up an audience who wants to watch and read what we do. There are interested people out there, and we cannot stop doing our work. We cannot betray the people who donate money to us and read what we produce. The second reason is that we are used to our work, we like to bury ourselves in papers, court decisions, databases, unpicking the causes or mechanisms of phenomena. We cannot do without it.
I think we need to keep doing such investigations because people will get tired of terrible war news, they will want to read about what they are used to. It is difficult to read for a long time about the atrocities and nonsensical ideas spewed out by our officials. Of course, we will cover the war as well. But we will also continue with investigations, no matter what.
Over the course of our work, we have built up an audience who wants to watch and read what we do. There are interested people out there, and we cannot stop doing our work. We cannot betray the people who donate money to us and read what we produce. The second reason is that we are used to our work, we like to bury ourselves in papers, court decisions, databases, unpicking the causes or mechanisms of phenomena. We cannot do without it.
